Interfering speech, reverberation, and temporally-fluctuating background noise have a significant negative impact on speech perception for the hearing impaired. While directional microphone arrays employing beamforming techniques have been shown to improve key metrics of speech intelligibility, especially for the hearing impaired, minimal user guidance capabilities have limited the achievable benefits for the hearing impaired user in multi-talker situations. It is widely accepted that current personal assistive listening systems, including those with directional microphone technology, are inadequate in small-group, multi-talker, multi-listener settings. The systems currently known in the art have significant limitations, including the inability of the personal assistive listening systems to operate effectively in realistic environments.
Accordingly, what is needed in the art is an assistive listening system and method that provides sufficient hearing improvement for listeners operating in an environment where there are multiple acoustic sources, such as in a multi-talker and/or noisy environment.